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World’s Student Christian Federation. 
European Student Relief Series No. 5. 


STUDENT SELF HELP IN SWITZERLAND. 


Help to Self-Help is a leading principle of our Federation European Relief, but neither the 
principle nor its practice is new to the World’s Student Christian Federation. An Employment Bureau 
has been for many years a regular feature of the Student Christian organisations in hundreds of uni- 
versities and colleges in North America: similar bureaus have been established in Europe, wherever 


work amongst foreign students has been carried on by any Student Movement, in London, or Paris, 
and elsewhere. 


The most conspicuous example of this kind of work is the system of Student Employment 
Bureaus, run in connection with the Student Christian Movement in Switzerland, for the benefit chiefly, 
of the many hundreds of foreign students stranded there through the war, Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, 
Serbians, Roumanians, Czechs, Armenians, Turks, Greeks and other nationalities. The outbreak of 
war cut these students off from home, money and supplies. Many of them would have starved 
to death, had not the Swiss Student Movement stepped in to organise all kinds of emergency relief. 
This relief, whenever possible, took the form of finding employment. 


In August, 1914, immediately after the declaration of war, the Geneva Women Student Foyer - 
organised bands of foreign women students and sent them out to reap the harvest, the Swiss har- 
vesters having been mobilised to defend the Swiss frontiers in case of invasion. The Neuchatel local 
Christian Association made arrangements for a group of about twenty-five women students to work 
by the day picking peas on a large vegetable farm situated on a picturesque island. In Geneva, later 
on, the secretary for men-students inaugurated a most interesting experiment in the form of an agri- 
cultural colony. The Jewish students, who proposed this to him, said that they had in mind as the 
ultimate objective, the preparation for an agricultural colony in Palestine ‘‘ after the War.’’ In 
autumn, 1916, the Geneva Association arranged to pick all the fruit on a large estate between Lau- 


sanne and Geneva, and for this purpose took into camp a number of foreign students, both men and 
women. 


Owing largely to the strenuous efforts of Miss Elizabeth Clark, the American secretary who 
was for so long the agent of the Federation in Switzerland, all this work was at last crystallised into 
Student Employment Bureaus. There were innumerable difficulties, far the most serious being the 
prejudice against the employment of the foreigner, which caused the extraordinary difficulty of getting 
jobs for foreigners there. In spite of all this, men students have found employment in carpentry, can- 
vassing, farming, work in vineyards, in barbers’ shops, in messenger service, as chauffeurs, hotel 
porters, concierges and guides for tourists. One graduate with two Ph.D. degrees was driving a cart 
and delivering heavy boxes for a firm whose employees threatened to strike, when they heard an office 
position had been offered to a Slav. So he held on as a carter, till he won the confidence of masters 
and men, and was offered an architect’s desk in the same firm. 


Women students have done waiting, sewing, knitting, dress-making, embroidery, making pre- 
serves, picking and drying vegetables, millinery, fine ironing, reading aloud, convalescent nursing, 
telephone operating, taking children to walk and supervising lessons and games, taking charge of 
hotel linen, canvassing, collecting bills for landladies. Both men and women have done teaching, 
typewriting, stenography, laboratory and library work, translation, piano accompaniments, lessons 
in music and skating and languages. 


Some interesting experiments have been made in the line of self-help schemes run by special 
groups of students. One of the most successful is a Russian Student Kitchen in Zitrich, carried on 
by Russian students, with a little help from the Federation. The entire work of the Kitchen, buying, 
cooking and serving food is done by the Russian students themselves, and in connection with it they 
have a workshop, where they make and sell all kinds of Russian embroideries, carving and toys. 


Many of these plans, first worked out in Switzerland, are being used on a far larger scale in 
our relief organisation in Austria and elsewhere; the students themselves are demanding help on just 
these lines, and eagerly investigating what has been done elsewhere. We anticipate a very great 


development of such self-help activities this winter. airs, ween 


WORLD'S STUDENT CHRISTIAN FEDERATION EUROPEAN STUDENT RELIEF. 


JOHN R. MOTT, Chairman. CONRAD HOFFMANN, Executive Secretary, RUTH ROUSE, Publicity Secretary. 
347, Madison Avenue, New York City. 3 rue Général Dufonr, Geneva, Switzerland. 28, Lancaster Road, Wimbledon, London, 8. W.19. 


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